


now we will build you (an endlessly upward world)

by notcaycepollard



Category: Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. (TV)
Genre: F/M, the lighthouse
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-12-12
Updated: 2017-12-12
Packaged: 2019-02-13 21:28:42
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,379
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/12992883
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/notcaycepollard/pseuds/notcaycepollard
Summary: He sees it in the market: a flash of color in a pile of dirty trash, just old plastic and metal scavenged out of the mess of the Earth.





	now we will build you (an endlessly upward world)

**Author's Note:**

  * For [nausicaa_of_phaeacia](https://archiveofourown.org/users/nausicaa_of_phaeacia/gifts).



He sees it in the market: a flash of color in a pile of dirty trash, just old plastic and metal scavenged out of the mess of the Earth. All that’s left of their world floating in a void of space and rubble, bits of detritus picked over for value and stripped of all meaning or context. But this—

“How much?” he asks, feigning indifference—a hand in the pocket, casual set of the shoulders and no bright-eyed interest—and the scavenger looks him up and down, touches it with dirty fingers.

“Three units,” she tells him, and it’s more than it’s worth, he knows that much. Work for a day, food for three, enough to bribe someone for a small favor or get you two beers toward convincing someone into doing you a large one. But he’s just sold his shirt, unpatched cloth and matching buttons, and this might be the last one of its kind in the world. In the universe, maybe.

“Two,” he says, and she tilts her head, exchanges the credits. He tucks it into his pocket, nods once. Glances over her pile again, but there’s nothing else here.

 

He finds Daisy down in her bunk—in her _bunk_ , he marvels, as if they were back on the Bus, years and so many long decades behind them—and knocks like maybe there’s a door here coded to her ID card or lanyard or fingerprint, like perhaps this carved-out little patch of space on a rock orbiting a destroyed planet might have such things as locks or doors or personal boundaries.

She glances up. Pushes herself to her feet.

“Coulson,” she says, voice husky with what might be surprise or pleasure or tiredness, or perhaps all three. “Hey, what’s up?”

There’s not much room to sit, here in her bunk; she’d escaped the Kree but there’s nowhere to run past the boundaries of the Lighthouse, and it makes this tiny hidden room more prison than sanctuary. He can see her impatience, her longing to be gone; she’s never been good at sitting still, he remembers suddenly. The containment room, the Retreat, a cabin and a lake and a wide open sky, and she’d fidgeted with her sweater cuffs just the way she’s doing now, had chewed on her lip and frowned and visibly pushed it down.

“Came to see how you’re holding up,” he says, hesitating for a minute and then sitting down on the edge of her bed. She sits, mirroring him; the two of them angled to each other, very carefully not quite touching.

“I’m fine,” she says, and it’s brittle: _I’m fine, Coulson_ , he hears, and looks at the dark shadows under her eyes, the way her face has gone drawn and tight.

“Must be rough,” he says, neutral. “Being cooped up like this. I know you’ve never—” and all of a sudden he’s thinking of her face through a pane of glass, long hair and exhausted fear in her eyes.

_Is that what you want to do? Run?_

“Well,” she says, shrugging, spreading her hands palm-up on her knees. “Couldn’t go anywhere even if I wanted to, huh?”

It's call and response: history and present all colliding, elastic and untethered in time, and he thinks of all the moments that've brought them here, that have them repeating the past like this over and again between them, stretching out forever ahead.  _It's quantum_ , he thinks,  _you can't change fate or the future or whatever this is. Whatever this might be_. Glances at Daisy's palms, life lines and fate lines and heart lines, and wonders if that would tell them any more than what they don't know. 

“We’re working on it,” Coulson promises her, and Daisy nods, pushes her hair behind one ear.

“Yeah, I know. Everyone’s working on it. I just— _fuck_ , I’m stupid. I let Deke play me, let them catch me. I should have known better. And now I’m trapped down here, and I—”

“Hey,” Coulson says. Catches her hand before she can smack it against the metal wall again. “We’ll figure it out. We always do.”

“Yeah,” she sighs, exhaling long and slow: the line of her shoulders falling. “Yeah, Coulson, I know.”

“You need anything?”

“A Quinjet?” Daisy suggests. “Direct line to whichever Avengers might still be around after all this? Some Little Debbie snack cakes?”

“I’ll see what I can do,” Coulson tells her, dry, and she smiles sideways before laughing out loud short and quick and bright. It makes him ache; it makes him want to touch her hair, the corner of her mouth, and then he realizes he’s still holding her wrist. Lets go, and she touches her fingertips to the ragged hole in the knee of her jeans, sighs again very quiet.

“He says I did it,” she says after a minute or two, and it takes Coulson a moment to understand what she means; that she did this, _that she_ — “The destroyer of worlds. I tore the Earth apart.”

“Daisy,” Coulson starts, and doesn’t know how to finish. “You—”

“I didn’t do it,” she whispers. “I didn’t, I _couldn’t_ , but it happened, Coulson, it happened and we’re here, and what if it was. What if it was me.”

“You don’t know that,” he tells her, fierce, furious with Deke and all his shit and how he's laid this weight on her shoulders as if he has the right, “you can’t _know_ that, Daisy,” and she takes a hitching breath, bites her lip and wipes her face on her sleeve.

“Yeah,” she says, “yeah, Coulson, but look at what else I’ve done,” and that makes him grab for her, unthinking: folding her into his arms, and she goes, pressing her face into the curve of his neck like she’s been waiting for it for a long, long time.

“You did what you had to,” he says. Strokes her hair, unwashed and dirty now with sweat and grime despite how she’s tried to brush it out; water’s too precious here to waste. “If you did it—if you did this—it was because you had to. Maybe you had to tear the world down in order to save it.”

She doesn’t reply. Just tightens her fingers, incremental, against his shoulder, and Coulson runs his fingers through her hair again, rests his palm brief against the nape of her neck.

 

“Sorry,” she says eventually. Doesn’t pull away. “Sorry, Coulson, I just—”

“Bad day, huh?”

“Yeah,” she says, low. “Yeah, a bad day. A really fucking terrible day.” It’s just been a set of them, day after day, months piling up; his LMD _shot_ her, he remembers her saying, before she’d ever dropped herself into the Framework to drag him and everyone else out of memories that never existed to happen at all. 

“Oh!” he says, remembering; “I brought you something,” and digs in his pocket, pulls out his new treasure dug from the trash of an Earth left behind.

“How—” Daisy says, when he drops it into her hand. Looks at it, and then back at him, her eyes wide with disbelief. “Coulson, how did you—”

“It’s not yours,” he says. “Not your one, I mean. I just found it in the market. Thought you should have it.” Watches Daisy touch the hula girl’s hair, the plastic grass skirt. It’s worn in places, the paint chipped away; Daisy rubs her thumb over it like it’s precious. Sets it down on the ledge by her bed, this one familiar thing in an alien world, and it should make it worse: it should make everything worse, the terrible and stark shock of it all, but it’s better, somehow; it’s like they could be in her van, in her bunk, in the base.

“Coulson,” Daisy says, soft, and then, again, quieter, “ _Coulson_ ,” and she’s sliding her hand into his, tangling their fingers together; is leaning in against him to press her forehead against his.

“We’ll build it again,” she says, and her mouth is very close to his, her breath warm on his lips; it makes him brave.

“Even if it’s all gone,” he agrees, “we’ll make something new,” and when she closes the distance, it’s the start: a new world, a new life, something small and unfolding and infinite.


End file.
